Lost my Network, but I can see it in the menu

Teell · 07 Jul 2010

Hi everybody, hope you are having a better morning than I am.

Here is the situation. I had just reformatted my computer and was checking my IP config and found that my IP had changed. fine. go to my router page to change the IP there that is setup for forwarding my torrents and games and instead of changing the IP, it wipes my router of all information that it once had on it. weird, I know. so fortunately I managed to get back on the router page and setup the internet again. Fine. So I have internet under a different network which is pretty much the exact same thing as the last one except that it does not have my settings. I was looking through my network and sharing and noticed the old network is there but I cannot connect to it. It does not come up under the networks that I am allowed to connect to, only sits there under "manage my networks" and is useless. Anyway way to get back to my previous network?

not so gray matter · 07 Jul 2010

Once you've reset your routers settings, setting them back to whatever you had before effectively places you within the same network as before. As far as your IP change goes, that likely has more to do with your ISP, unless you IP changed from 192.168.X.X to something similar. Those IPs are only used for individual computers within a router's network. If you wish to keep the same one, you can setup your router to assign your computer a specific IP instead of using DHCP.

Once you've reset your router's settings, there is no way to revert to your "old" network. This is because your router is broadcasting the network and once you've reset it, the network changes. The only reason you can still see it in Network & Sharing is likely due to the fact that your wireless has a memory of previous networks.

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A simple explanation of router networking:

In short, your router is simply a tool which can "split" an individual network connection coming from your modem between one or more computers. It does this through assigning individual internet protocol addresses to each computer and then combining all traffic so that the modem sees all traffic as coming from one source. The second function of a router uses these individual addresses to allow the individual computers to communicate with each other within the private network that is created by the router.

The reason that your IP changed is due to the fact that your router uses DHCP and assigns a new IP address each time that a computer is connected to the network. It reserved your old ip (likely a variant of 192.168.1.1XX) for your old installation. This internal ip address can change as much as your want unless you are forwarding specific ports to that computer. In that case you need to switch your router's settings that that incoming traffic is forwarded to the new ip.

If you want to avoid having your router switch your computer's ip address, you can tell your router and/or computer to use a manual DHCP address instead of an automatic one. This simply means that instead of letting the router decide which ip to assign, a pre defined IP address is associated with your computer's unique ID (mac address) permanently. This allows you to forward information from external sources to your computer within your router's network (forward traffic pointed at global ip to internal ip).

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If you didn't understand any of that I don't blame you. It's probably due to my poor explanation rather than it being complex. The only thing you really need to know is that you have to setup manual DHCP if you want to have a static internal IP address and once a router's settings are reset, the previous network ceases to exist.

Teell · 07 Jul 2010

nope that made pretty much perfect sense. so the network is there just to be there but it is unusable and I need to reset my router completely now because it does not work at all. not a big deal. just curious if it was possible to get the old settings back. With the family and all though, this will be a headache. Any links to guides on setting a router and computer for specific IPs and manual DHCP? Funny I did this all 4 or 5 years ago and now I cannot remember for the life of me how I did it.

on another note, the router is not connecting to the internet. The modem is fine. have it connected to the family computer to test and it is connecting...which is the reason I can type here. I know this is incredibly vague but for some reason I have no idea where to begin. I have reset the router, created a new network, sat on my head and spun around in circles, nothing works. any tips?

not so gray matter · 07 Jul 2010

You should check to see if you router is functioning as well. This can be done easily. Configure your router's network without plugging it into the modem. Now attempt to connect to your router's network through two computers. You won't have internet access, but if your computer's network is configured properly you should be able to connect to the other computer's shared resources.

Are you on cable or dsl?

If you're on DSL you may have to set up your router to connect to your modem using PPPoe this simply means that you have to supply a username and password in order for the router to receive a connection from the modem.

Also, keep in mind that once you have the router's network setup properly, you need to do the following.

Turn off all devices (Router, Modem, Computer)

Turn on Modem, Wait for Modem to Properly connect to ISP (Watch the lights, wait for connection to be established)

Turn on Router, Wait for Router to Properly connect to Modem (Watch lights, etc)

Turn on Computer.

This allows for your modem to connect first, then once it is connect the router can properly connect to it. Once this is done, the computer can then request a connection from the router.

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If you're using wired connections and have a cable ISP, you should be able to connect the router to the modem and the computer(s) to the router with minimal configuration. However, if you're using wireless and/or DSL you'll need to setup the router to connect to the DSL modem using PPPoe and/or configure the router's wireless network.

chev65 · 07 Jul 2010

There is a very easy way to solve this problem before it ever occurs. Simply create a .gws file in your routers control panel and put it somewhere safe. This file can be saved on most modern routers and is very useful for getting your settings back to exactly how they were before the router reset.

This file will save all router settings for you, ports fowarded, Ip's the same, every setting back to how it was before with the click of a button. On my Dlink router the place where you create and apply this file looks like the picture below.

I believe that the problem you might be having now is that your IPv4 "properties" on your other machines maybe set to static IP's" I can only guess at this" So unless the IPv4's static IP's match up with the ones your router is assigning it's not going to work.

Unless you have a really good reason for using static IP's you should set everything to use DHCP instead. It's much easier that way in the long run. I'll also post a screen shot of the network configuration window, you should click on IPv4 then properties, you can set to DHCP or manually input the IP, DNS, subnet mask and default gateway.

It might also help to go into your Credential Manager, Control panel>Credential Manager and edit or delate the old connections from there.

Teell · 07 Jul 2010

the reason i used static ips was because it was easier when i was opening up my ports. it didnt work when i was doing it the last time but maybe for right now ill set everything back to that. ok thanks again for your help guys. ill try this stuff out and post back if i solve it and how.

Teell · 08 Jul 2010

alrighty well i have tried pretty much everything i can think of. Let me do a quick run down and see what you guys think.

Using a cable modem and linksys wrt54gr router which i have had for 7 or 8 years. 3 computers wireless, 1 wired. No static IPs on any of them and the router is also set to auto dhcp. ive reset the router and attempted to create a new network from the router to no avail. the modem is fine so no beef with my cable company. the router on the other hand seems to get internet because the internet light is flashing but i cannot connect to the internet when the wired computer is plugged into the router. This makes me assume the router is having an issue. The wireless computers also cannot connect to the internet at any time. They can all see each other on the same network but none of them get internet. called both linksys and time warner and they have been no help. any thoughts?

chev65 · 08 Jul 2010

The older linksys WRT series routers always seem to need a firmware update to work with Windows 7.

You can open ports with DHCP enabled but you will want to save the settings if you are opening ports for only certain IP's. This assumes your router has the ablity to save settings with a .gws file like mine does.

You might also try using one of the Tomato firmware. The most recent one is 09 which should work.
Added ID for WTR54GS, WZR-G108 - thanks to BaoWeiQuan; WR100 - thanks to Hovsep.

http://www.polarcloud.com/firmware

Looking at the Linksys support for your particular router there doesn't seem to be any recent firmware updates since 2005 which can be a problem. Using static IP's may still work but DHCP doesn't seem to be working for you. So the tomato firmware may be the best option.

http://www.linksysbycisco.com/APAC/e...T54GR/download

Teell · 08 Jul 2010

ill keep that in mind. i was going to buy a new router as a present for someone in my family so this seems like an opportune moment to do so. i have it setup now so that it is working but not as i intended so ill deal with that as it comes. thanks for all the suggestions. they were all incredibly helpful.

chev65 · 08 Jul 2010

Teell said:

ill keep that in mind. i was going to buy a new router as a present for someone in my family so this seems like an opportune moment to do so. i have it setup now so that it is working but not as i intended so ill deal with that as it comes. thanks for all the suggestions. they were all incredibly helpful.

A new router would certainly solve the problem, not to mention you will get better transfer speeds and it will be much easier to set up the new router. The combo wired-wireless models with 10/100/1000 on both the LAN and WAN are great, plus you get more range and faster wireless using wireless N.